April 19 2012

I went out on a limb today to try something different. It wasn’t that long ago that I came across some cool sci-fi looking images of buildings floating in the air resembling giant spaceships and I thought I had to try it one day….well that day ended up being today.

Since tonight was opening night for Cirque du Soleil’s new touring show Amaluna here in Montreal, I thought of trying the mirror effect on the big top.

Cirque du Soleil Big Top floats into Montreal

Once I had it in my head that I would try this effect, it was a little bizarre walking around looking at buildings and trying to imagine them reflected. Having not really studied what was involved on the processing side I was working very much by chance that my shots would actually end up being usable.

Floating Montreal skyline

Jacques Cartier Bridge Skeleton

Complex Desjardins Insect

Something I realized after processing a few was that you really need isolated buildings for the floating  effect.

Floating Apartments

New York Life and Aldred buildings take flight

With all these spaceship like buildings floating around, I wasn’t that surprised to come across a space lagged Jedi sleeping it off by the Palais des Congrès.

A Jedi?

Zeppelin

Although I wasn’t able to separate the top part from adjoining buildings I really like how this last one came out, particularly the traffic lights resembling glowing red eyes.

Glowing eyes

Since I was pretty much only shooting with this effect in mind, if the shots hadn’t worked out I would have likely been screwed for posting my pic of the day. As it turned out I was reasonably happy with my first attempts and already have some other places in mind to shoot for this technique.

I imagine people either love or hate this effect. I have to say I kind of dig it, the process is pretty simple and really puts buildings and objects in a new perspective.  I would love to know what you think – Like or hate?

To view images in gallery format, simply click on one of the images below.

Thanks for stopping by. Until next time.

– Martin

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